August 27, 2008

University in India Takes Steps to Set Up Shop in the United States

While many American universities are eagerly eyeing India and other parts of Asia as potential markets for new students, one India-based institution has set its sights on the United States.

The institution, Vinayaka Missions America University Inc., has just bought the former headquarters of an energy company in western Maryland for $8.5-million and says it plans to begin operations as early as this fall by offering noncredit courses.

Eventually, according to the Herald-Mail, a local newspaper, leaders of the 27-year-old institution said they hoped to offer degree programs, including some in nursing.

The university, which carries approval from the Indian government, according to its Web site, celebrated its purchase of the Allegheny Energy Company’s former headquarters building and 45 acres of land on Tuesday at a news conference, where leaders of the institution offered traditional Indian-print shawls to local officials.

University officials said that the institution now operated 27 educational institutions with 20,000 full-time students and 40,000 distance-education students. —Goldie Blumenstyk

Missing Painting at Wellesley College May Have Been Tossed Out

A 1921 painting by the French cubist Fernand Leger is missing from the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College, and the painting might have been stolen or accidentally thrown out with some crates, The Boston Globe reports today.

The museum lent the painting, “Woman and Child,” to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art for an exhibit there through April 2007, the newspaper reports. After the Oklahoma museum shipped it back in a crate along with other paintings, it was stored in a vault at the Davis museum during renovations. Museum officials noticed the painting was missing last fall.

The officials don’t know what happened to the painting, but it has been reported as missing to the Art Loss Register, and an insurance company has already paid the college’s claim. The Globe reports that the average price of a Leger painting is in the neighborhood of $2.8-million.

Wellesley College art historians are saddened over the loss of the painting.

“We’ve all wondered about it,” Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, an associate professor of art, told the Globe. “It’s a tremendous loss for the college, but, beyond that, we just don’t have a lot of information.” —Kate Moser

August 26, 2008

Stanford to Restrict Industry Sponsorship of Continuing Medical Education

In an effort to avoid conflicts of interest, Stanford University will severely restrict industry support for continuing medical education, the medical school’s dean, Phillip A. Pizzo, announced today on its Web site.

For years, drug and medical-device companies have paid for refresher courses that doctors must take to maintain their licenses. The companies say they just want to keep doctors current on the latest medical information, but critics charge that the sponsors use the courses to promote their products.

Under Stanford’s new policy, which will take effect on Monday, the medical school will pool contributions from drug companies rather than allow a company to specify which specific courses it wants to underwrite. “I want to be able to honor the public trust,” Dr. Pizzo said. “We want CME to be unbiased and science-driven, and we don’t want it to be influenced by marketing.”

Five other major medical schools have adopted the pooled approach, The New York Times reported today, citing information from a watchdog group called the Prescription Project. The others are the medical schools at the Universities of Colorado, Kansas, Massachusetts, Pittsburgh, and California at Davis. The move comes two years after Stanford banned industry gifts, including free meals, at its medical center.

The issue of conflict of interest in medical education has sparked heated debate in recent years. Last month, U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa told The Chronicle that the National Institutes of Health should revoke grants to university scientists who failed to report conflicts of interest. And last year, the Republican senator issued a report describing how he says pharmaceutical companies use continuing medical education to bolster sales of their products. —Katherine Mangan

Nevada Governor Fires Back at University Chancellor in Budget Dispute

The pugnacious chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education, James E. Rogers, has for months waged a public campaign attacking the state’s governor for his proposed budget cuts of up to 16 percent for the system. Last week Gov. James Gibbons fired back with an angry letter of his own, in which he singled out university salaries for criticism.

“The system of higher education currently employs 1,328 people who are paid $100,000 or more annually,” Mr. Gibbons, a Republican, wrote, according to the Las Vegas Sun. “I cannot help but wonder how many Nevadans would support an income tax, or any increased taxes for that matter, to sustain those salary levels in the face of significant government spending reductions in other areas.”

Mr. Rogers is hardly backing down. In a terse reply, he said that the governor’s letter “confirmed every one of my fears and concerns” and that it was clear that Mr. Gibbons had “no problem in sacrificing education.”

And today Mr. Rogers released a public memorandum, under the heading “Hope, hope. There is hope,” in which he says the state’s Legislature will find a financial solution that “at least will prevent the dismantling of the Nevada System of Higher Education.” —Paul Fain

August 25, 2008

A Mysterious Silence Emanates From Warren National U.

Warren National University appears to be in trouble.

A note on its Web site says the institution has “suspended, until further notice, the admission or reactivation of students into our degree programs.” What this means for current students is unclear.

Warren National, which is unaccredited, has an interesting history. Previously known as Kennedy-Western University, it has moved from Idaho to California to its current home, Wyoming. It received some unwelcome publicity in 2004, when it and several other unaccredited institutions were the subjects of an investigation by the General Accounting Office. It later changed its name to Warren National.

For the past few days, the university’s Web site has been down. The note blames the decision on “economic uncertainty.” Multiple calls to the university today went to employees’ voice-mail. Even the campus operator failed to answer. —Thomas Bartlett

Fiscal Crisis Leads Berkeley's Student Newspaper to Cut Publication and Staff

Berkeley, Calif. — The downturn in the newspaper industry is beginning to take a toll on student newspapers as well. The independent student newspaper at the University of California’s campus here, The Daily Californian, announced today that it would cut back its publication and reduce its staff because of declining advertising revenue.

The 135-year-old paper is particularly vulnerable to changes in the market for newspaper advertising because, unlike most college papers, it is financially independent of the institution it covers. Editors at the paper, which publishes about 10,000 print copies each weekday, made it independent of the university in 1971, after a dispute with university administrators over the content of an editorial.

The newspaper is eliminating a print issue on Wednesdays, cutting its staff by 25 percent, and reducing pay to some editors and reporters, according to an announcement by its editor, Bryan Thomas. The paper is starting a campaign to build an endowment and is offering new forms of advertising in an attempt to raise new revenue and return to a five-day-a-week publication schedule, Mr. Thomas said. —Josh Keller

August 24, 2008

Can't a College President Have Any Fun?

A candid photograph can cause trouble for college presidents, as well for students. Just ask Robert Paxton, president of Iowa Central Community College.

On Saturday, The Des Moines Register reported on a photograph circulating in the Fort Dodge area, where the college is located, that appeared to show Mr. Paxton pouring beer down the throat of a young woman on a boat. The photograph also shows another passenger pouring vodka into someone’s mouth, according to the newspaper.

The article quoted an expert in higher-education ethics, who said that Mr. Paxton had a responsibility to “demonstrate exemplary conduct” to students. Mr. Paxton, however, said the keg in the photograph was broken and did not dispense beer. “I wasn’t misbehaving,” he told the Register. “I wasn’t drinking.” A trustee of the college said that the photograph pertained to Mr. Paxton’s private life, and that the president had done nothing wrong.

The article suggests that as some college presidents push for debate over the drinking age, the thirst for stories of presidential imbibing may grow. —Eric Hoover

August 22, 2008

U. of Iowa Professor Accused in Grading Scheme May Be Dead

A University of Iowa professor who faced criminal charges for allegedly offering female students A’s if they would let him fondle their breasts may be dead. The Des Moines Register reported this morning that the police have been searching a 185-acre wooded park this week where the political-science professor, Arthur H. Miller, left his car on Tuesday morning.

Inside the BMW, the police found his wallet and cellphone and a box of ammunition for a high-powered rifle that he purchased in June. Mr. Miller’s wife said her husband had left what she believes is a suicide note at their home.

“The ordeal of the last two weeks has become unbearable for Arthur,” the professor’s family said in a written statement. “He could not live with the thought that his name and reputation were smeared and associated with things which he believed he never had done.” Mr. Miller, who is 66 and has worked at Iowa since 1985, has two young sons.

The professor was charged on August 8 with four counts of accepting bribes based on allegations that he had asked four female students to expose their breasts in exchange for better grades. Shortly after that, Iowa’s president, Sally Mason, ordered all Iowa professors to undergo training on how to avoid sexual harassment. Until now, only supervisors have been required to undergo such training.

Mr. Miller called a reporter at The Cedar Rapids Gazette on Tuesday morning, saying he felt he had been treated unfairly by an Iowa administrator. He has been on paid leave.

The police called off their search of the park last night and reopened it to the public. It is unclear whether the search will resume today. Some buildings at the university and five local schools were on lockdown for a while this week after Mr. Miller’s wife reported him missing. —Robin Wilson

August 21, 2008

Madison Chancellor Fires Off Parting Shots at Political and Business Leaders

John D. Wiley, the departing chancellor of the University of Wisconsin’s flagship campus at Madison, is not leaving quietly: In an essay in the September issue of Madison Magazine, he denounces a “toxic political environment” in the state’s capitol, blaming it for wasteful policies and a failure to deal with an ailing economy.

He also criticizes Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby, as having been hijacked by partisan interests, becoming “the single biggest driver of our toxic political environment and, thus, the single biggest obstacle to the recovery of Wisconsin’s economy.”

In a plea to state residents, he urges: “Unless we want Wisconsin to become a permanent third-world state, we need to stop electing fanatically dedicated partisan ideologues of all stripes and start electing pragmatic problem solvers.”

He also calls on the business group’s member companies to insist that its leaders “stay focused on legitimate issues of Wisconsin’s economic development instead of their personal political biases.”

Carolyn A. (Biddy) Martin becomes chancellor of the Madison campus next month. —Charles Huckabee

Leaked Contract Helps Sallie Mae and USA Funds in Court

A contract between Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest student-loan company, and USA Funds, the nation’s largest guarantee agency, helps both companies share hundreds of millions of dollars in federal student-loan business. It has now also helped the two companies thwart a lawsuit alleging fraud.

A federal judge in Chicago, Milton I. Shadur, this week dismissed the lawsuit, which had been brought by Rhonda Salmeron, a former manager at Enterprise Recovery Systems, a Chicago-area loan-collections company that worked under contract for USA Funds.

The judge dismissed the case as punishment for actions by Ms. Salmeron’s lawyer, including his leaking of the contract between Sallie Mae and USA Funds. The contract was described in a June report by The Chronicle and posted online by Wikileaks, a Web site that specializes in publishing documents provided by anonymous whistle-blowers.

Guarantee agencies are nonprofit entities whose duties include contacting borrowers who fall behind in repaying federally guaranteed loans. They also relay the federal reimbursement for defaulted borrowers to loan companies after the guarantor ensures that the lender has complied with the terms of the program.

Because of the guarantor’s oversight role, federal law requires a lender and a guarantor to be separate entities. A former director of student-aid policy at the Education Department, Larry Oxendine, said the publication of the contract between Sallie Mae and USA Funds demonstrated that their relationship was so intertwined and detrimental to the interests of students and taxpayers that the department should revisit its controversial 2004 decision to allow the partnership to continue.

Ms. Salmeron’s lawsuit concerned collections work that Enterprise Recovery Systems performed on behalf of USA Funds. The lawsuit alleged that USA Funds, in advance of site visits, routinely notified Enterprise Recovery Systems of which borrower case files it would examine, allowing the subcontractor to alter its records to show that the borrowers had been contacted about the status of their loans.

Enterprise Recovery Systems had not been contacting the borrowers at intervals required by law, Ms. Salmeron asserted in the lawsuit, thereby harming both borrowers and taxpayers by allowing the amount of the borrowers’ federally guaranteed debts to grow unchecked.

The lawsuit said that Sallie Mae, through its purchase of USA Group, the former parent of USA Funds, had a financial interest in the collections work.

A spokesman for USA Funds, Robert P. Murray, rejected the claims against his company, saying that the annual audits that USA Funds conducts of collection agencies are not required by federal regulation, and that USA Funds therefore has the right to define the terms of how it conducts the audits. All three companies denied Ms. Salmeron’s allegations in court filings. —Paul Basken

Update added on 8/25: The court had previously agreed, on Friday, August 15, to dismiss USA Funds from the case, Mr. Murray said.